July 08, 2012

Making Fondant Flowers for Fox6

We do a monthly weekend cooking segment on Fox6, filmed live on Sunday morning. While the segment generally airs around 8:30 at the studio, in Birmingham, my day starts at 4:45 in Tuscaloosa. Gotta have some coffee and wake up before driving about an hour. Also gotta set up on the kitchen set so I'm ready when they are. The actual segment only lasts five minutes, so we're limited in what we can do.

Part of the charm of this cake are the number and variety of flowers, plus the bright colors. None of them are particuarly hard to make, once all the fondant colors are made, and the tools are assembled.

So you will need some white fondant and lots of colors.

Tool-wise, you'll need a small rolling pin, scissors, small flower cutters, some fondant tools, a cell pad (soft foam pad) and pastry crimper. Plus maybe a little powdered sugar or cornstarch if your fondant gets sticky. If you decide to use glitter, you'll also need a dry brush to apply it. And if you're attaching the flowers to a dry surface such as fondant, you'll need some royal icing to help them stick.

I like to make some bright primary colors first, then blend them to make more. And by primary, I mean red, yellow, pink, teal and green. Leave a fair bit of fondant white -- white flowers are nice, but you can also use white to soften up bright colors.

Then pink and yellow make melon; pink and teal make lavender, yellow and green make lime green. The darker colors such as red make nice accents, after which you can make orange.

Here are some of the tools and techniques.

Roll out some fondant kind of thick and cut with a small flower cutter.

Then use a fondant tool with a ball tip to extend the petals (you can buy fondant tools online, or at hobby stores such as Michael's or Hobby Lobby. Clay tools work too.

And just roll up a little ball of a contrasting color of fondant for the center.

Lots of flowers like this one can be made by rolling out snakes of fondant, flattening them out a bit with the rolling pin, and rolling them up jelly-roll style.

I use scissors to cut off the extra on the bottom so the flower is flat and sits on the cake a bit better. A variation of this technique involves crimping the edges (I use a pastry crimper) to give the flower some texture. Here's the flattened snake roll being cut (then turn the fondant over and crimp the other side).

Then roll it up just like the non-crimped flower.

You can put as many or as few flowers on the cake as you like. We kinda like going a bit over the top, with almost a hundred on this one. This is a demo cake so it's just some foam covered with fondant. To get the flowers to stick, I used royal icing (and sometimes a bit of fondant to fill in the gaps). If you place these flowers on a buttercream cake, they'll stick with no added help.

So have some fun. And yes, if you look close you'll see a bit of edible glitter for effect.

How was wondering how can to design the flower petal appropriately with the ball shape on it. "And just roll up a little ball of a contrasting color of fondant for the center.” That tip was very useful I guess now I'm able to design various types of flowers using the same procedure